Royal Bank of Scotland, the British bank 70 per cent owned by the state, paid $841m for assets affected by the Goldman allegations when it bought ABN Amro. The government does not exert direct managerial control at RBS but Mr Brown said: "The banks themselves will be considering legal action."

Berlin said it would consider legal steps following the US action. IKB, a German bank that was one of the first casualties of the global crisis in the summer of 2007, invested about $150m in the collateralised debt obligation product at the centre of the case. IKB was later bailed out....In Britain, the Liberal Democrats led calls for a standalone UK inquiry. "So many of the alleged victims will be British institutions and pension funds, the FSA must take it as seriously as the SEC," Lord Oakeshott, the Lib Dem Treasury spokesman, said. The Conservatives backed calls for the FSA to investigate, while accusing Mr Brown of being slow to act on bank regulation. "These are very serious allegations [against Goldman] that should be thoroughly investigated," Mark Hoban, shadow financial secretary, said....

Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc paid $841 million to Goldman Sachs to unwind its position [cost of GS repurchase --leaving one to wonder how much ABN paid] in Abacus, which it inherited when it bought parts of ABN Amro in 2007, according to the SEC.

This report of RBS exposure [none] makes sense, since auditors at RBS will have recognized --after the ABN merger-- a lot of the CDO's toxic "collateral" originated by RBS's craptastic, transnational, subprime mortgage bonanza over the previous five years. While ABN wankers would have not.